Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: space – Page 618

Methane Keeps Showing Up on Mars. NASA Just Got Closer to Solving The Mystery

Methane is an organic molecule that hangs around in Earth’s atmosphere and is mostly produced by living organisms, most notoriously by burping cows. Its detection on Mars, on the other hand, has been a weird mystery for planetary scientists.

In recent years, NASA’s Curiosity rover has picked up tiny traces of methane numerous times on the red planet. While these emissions might be coming from some geological process, it was possible they could indicate the presence of some sort of life form on Mars (unlikely to be cows, of course).

As you’d expect, scientists are really excited by that prospect, but the data are confusing. Higher in the atmosphere, orbiting technology from the European Space Agency (ESA) has detected no methane in any concentration.

Bursting the Hubble Bubble: Powerful Ground-Based Telescope Will See Further and Clearer Than Hubble Space Telescope

Australian scientists will help construct one of the world’s most powerful ground-based telescopes that promises to see further and clearer than the Hubble Space Telescope and unlock mysteries of the early Universe.

The team will develop a new, world-first instrument that will produce images three times sharper than Hubble under the multimillion-dollar project.

The MAVIS instrument will be fitted to one of the eight-meter Unit Telescopes at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) Very Large Telescope in Chile, to remove blurring from telescope images caused by turbulence in Earth’s atmosphere. MAVIS will be built over seven years at a cost of $57 million.

Methane in the Plumes of Saturn’s Moon Enceladus: Possible Signs of Life?

An unknown methane-producing process is likely at work in the hidden ocean beneath the icy shell of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, suggests a new study published in Nature Astronomy by scientists at the University of Arizona and Paris Sciences & Lettres University.

Giant water plumes erupting from Enceladus have long fascinated scientists and the public alike, inspiring research and speculation about the vast ocean that is believed to be sandwiched between the moon’s rocky core and its icy shell. Flying through the plumes and sampling their chemical makeup, the Cassini spacecraft detected a relatively high concentration of certain molecules associated with hydrothermal vents on the bottom of Earth’s oceans, specifically dihydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide. The amount of methane found in the plumes was particularly unexpected.

“We wanted to know: Could Earthlike microbes that ‘eat’ the dihydrogen and produce methane explain the surprisingly large amount of methane detected by Cassini?” said Régis Ferrière, an associate professor in the University of Arizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and one of the study’s two lead authors. “Searching for such microbes, known as methanogens, at Enceladus’ seafloor would require extremely challenging deep-dive missions that are not in sight for several decades.”

Neil Patrick Harris Is the New Spokesman for Crypto ATM Firm Coin Flip

Neil Patrick Harris is the latest celebrity to express love and enthusiasm for bitcoin. So much so that he is now serving as the new spokesperson for Coin Flip, a leading crypto ATM firm.

Neil Patrick Harris Is a Big Crypto Fan

Harris is well known for playing lead roles in television programs such as “How I Met Your Mother” and “Doogie Howser, M.D.” However, what many do not know about the young star is that he is an avid crypto trader and investor. He entered the bitcoin space relatively early and has spent the last few years watching his investment grow into something he never thought possible.

Unusual Comet – 1000 Times More Massive Than Typical – Discovered in Outer Solar System

Estimated to be 100–200 kilometers across, the unusual wandering body will make its closest approach to the Sun in 2031.

A giant comet from the outskirts of our Solar System has been discovered in 6 years of data from the Dark Energy Survey. Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is estimated to be about 1000 times more massive than a typical comet, making it arguably the largest comet discovered in modern times. It has an extremely elongated orbit, journeying inward from the distant Oort Cloud over millions of years. It is the most distant comet to be discovered on its incoming path, giving us years to watch it evolve as it approaches the Sun, though it’s not predicted to become a naked-eye spectacle.

A giant comet has been discovered by two astronomers following a comprehensive search of data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). The comet, which is estimated to be 100–200 kilometers across, or about 10 times the diameter of most comets, is an icy relic flung out of the Solar System by the migrating giant planets in the early history of the Solar System. This comet is quite unlike any other seen before and the huge size estimate is based on how much sunlight it reflects.

Astronomers Detect a Lurking Cosmic Cloud, Bigger Than The Entire Milky Way

In the yawning vacuum of intergalactic space, something large is lurking.

Not a galaxy, although it’s of a comparable size: A vast cloud of hot, faintly glowing gas, bigger than the Milky Way, in the space between galaxies congregating in a huge cluster.

Scientists believe this cloud may have been unceremoniously stripped from a galaxy in the cluster, the first gas cloud of this kind we’ve ever seen. Even more surprisingly, it hasn’t dissipated, but has remained clumped together for hundreds of millions of years.

European Robotic Arm

Concept I introduced long ago in TMP2 as the Inchworm orbital service robot is now being demonstrated by the ESA with the new Russian addition to the ISS.

It is much like a human arm. It has an elbow, shoulders and even wrists. The European Robotic Arm (ERA) is the first robot able to ‘walk’ around the Russian segment of the International Space Station.

Light yet powerful, the orbital arm has the ability to anchor itself to the Station and move back and forward by itself, hand-over-hand between fixed base-points. This space robot looks like a pair of compasses and has a length of over 11 m. When stretched, it could pass a football from a penalty spot to the goalkeeper.

The robot will serve as main manipulator on the Russian part of the Space Station. Its seven joints can handle multi-tonne payloads with a large range of motion for assembly tasks.

The Avenues of America: Astronaut Captures Stunning Photo of US Capitol From Space Station

Wide, diagonal avenues radiate from the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., outward through the city.

The original layout and design of Washington, D.C., comes to life in this springtime photograph taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station. The near-nadir, high resolution photo offers a view of the city’s layout that its architects, Peter L‘Enfant and Andrew Ellicott, could only imagine when they drew up plans for the District of Columbia in the 1790s. Nestled at the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, today the city serves as both the seat of the U.S. government and as a tribute to the history of the nation.

From above, the city layout draws the eye to the Capitol. This was the architects’ starting point, and the rest of the city was built in quadrants defined by axes extending in cardinal directions from this “center” of American government. These axes orient the rest of the D.C. street grid, with one notable exception. Wide, diagonal avenues radiate from the Capitol outward through the city, meeting with other diagonals to form parks and public spaces. These diagonals, named after the first states, are the main thoroughfares. The most famous of these avenues is a direct line between two branches of government—Pennsylvania Avenue physically links the White House with the Capitol.